Jaws Part II

Chapter 15

Jaws

By: Peter Benchley

“Hey Jeffery!”

“What?”

“Look what I found!”

            The smaller of the two boys hauled into the small canoe a flotation device.  

“I think it’s for a lobster trap.”

“I doubt it Chris.  Look, it’s too big and heavy to be for a trap.  Let’s try to haul it up anyways.  Maybe it’s a giant hook and on it it’s got fish!”

            Quickly the two boys pulled on the rope to haul up the cargo on the end.  Slowly, the object on the bottom was coming up.  The water was too murky to see what the real thing was, but at the moment it felt and looked like a sack of potatoes.

“Jeff? *Grunt* Can we *pant* take a *pant* break?

“Look, *pant* it’s almost at the surface, *pant* can you *pant* hold out ten more seconds?”

“Fine, *pant* oh, *pant* here it *pant* comes!”

            Both boys grunted in unison to bring up the mysterious object to the top.  Floating to the movement of the waves was brown grass.  On its sides it had….

“Chris! Don’t touch it!!  It’s a… It’s a ….”  Poor Jeffery couldn’t get the words out, he was so terrified.  He knew what the object was that was on the end of the rope.  There was an article on it just the other day.  “Don’t touch it!!”

            Jeffery innocently pushed the side of the object with his hand.  It felt cold and slimy and little like wet cloth.  In a response to his push, the object flipped over to reveal what lay on its lower side.

“AAAaaaaaagggghhhhh!!!!”

            The boys screamed in unison.  They through the buoy back overboard and rowed back to shore as fast as they could.

            The corpse that was on the end of the line leered up at the sky as it drifted back down to the depths.  The body no longer looked like the man that it was only a few short hours ago.  Quint was his name, now he was just dinner to the fish that he used to catch for himself.  His body had been eaten by the fish in the area.  By the time the police come with Brody, the last man to see him alive, there won’t be any thing left except for a tattered rope and bits of cloth. 

Epilogue

            The two boys had rowed to shore as fast as they could.  Their first impulse when they reached land was to throw up on to the beach.  Never before in their lives had they seen something as disgusting as that.  Then again, in their small town of Amity, nothing as horrible as the great fish had ever been there before. There has been the occasional fire, burglary or drowning, but nothing as horrible as this.  A monster shark feeding off of their town’s shores and seeing a victim of the shark might make ones stomach a little queasy.  Fortunately the shark has gone. When Brody and the rescue team went out to pick up the remains of Quint, the shark had sunk to the bottom of the sea.  Sharks do not have flotation bladders that would enable them to float to the top of the ocean. Instead, sharks sink when they do not swim. Brody sent out a dive team to search for the monster of a shark.  The dive team did not find a trace of the shark, only a few fragments from Hooper’s diving equipment.  The Town of Amity was safe from any more shark invasions….for now.